Siegeled, Simonized and Such

From Paul Dickson interview on All Things Considered for DRUNK, September 25, 2009, in which Madeline Brand started the trend to create new terms for Drunk from the names of NPR hosts. Dickson tries to point out that these have to have some basis in reality and then it dawned on him that these terms are now swimming around in the minds of NPR listeners.

BRAND: I got one for you.
Mr. DICKSON: What’s that?
BRAND: Robert Siegeled.
Mr. DICKSON: Robert…
(Soundbite of laughter)
BRAND: Let’s add that one in.
Mr. DICKSON: That would – but…
BRAND: Just for fun
Mr. DICKSON: …but nobody – you can’t do that. It has to have a…
BRAND: It’s only for public radio at this time.
Mr. DICKSON: Only for public – Robert Siegeled.
BRAND: I mean, you could do them all, Noah Adamsed. You know, I mean, you could do everybody. You could do anybody. I mean, Scott Simoned.
(Soundbite of laughter)
Mr. DICKSON: Scott Simonized. I mean, you could do anybody.

Listen to the full interview at NPR.org.

Big Blotto News!

Forget “Balloon Boy” and other top news items and pay attention to an  article entitled “Researchers From University Of Alberta Report On Findings In Language And Communication.”

From Health & Medicine Week :(June 15, 2009):

According to a study from Edmonton, Canada, “This article surveys the earliest attestations of blotto ‘drunk’ and proposes a new etymology for it in their light. The first nine attestations of the form in English can be dated between July 1917 and the end of January 1919; eight of them, all with the sense ‘drunk’, have a connection to World War I’s Western Front.”

“The odd one out, in which Blotto is used as a proper name and has no connection to intoxication, is from a story written by an Englishman residing in Paris. The article argues that none of the previously offered explanations of blotto is satisfactory and points out that none explains the nearly simultaneous emergence of the form in Western Front slang and as a fictional name,” wrote J. Considine and colleagues, University of Alberta (see also Language and Communication).

The researchers concluded: “It proposes that blotto was likeliest suggested by the name of Blotto Freres, manufacturer of a well-known and often unstable delivery vehicle widely used in France in the early twentieth century.”

Considine and colleagues published the results of their research in American Speech (EARLY USES AND ETYMOLOGY OF BLOTTO. American Speech, 2009;84(1):72-82).

Send us your synonyms!

Paul set the Guiness World Record this time around, but we’re gearing up to break it again.  And with your help!  There must be phrases that we’ve left out, haven’t heard of, or just simply didn’t have time to find.  Is your favorite drunken synonym missing from this collection?  Scroll to the bottom of the page to leave your word or phrase in the reply box, along with an explanation of where they came from and how they are used, and you’ll be included in our second edition of Drunk: the Definitive Drinker’s Dictionary.  Please see submission rules in the right sidebar for more details.